‘A public health crisis’: How Wake County plans to fight gun violence in 2023
It’s not just gangs and shootouts on the street when it comes to gun violence, Wake County Commissioner Vicki Adamson says.
“I also think about intimate partner violence,” Adamson told her fellow commissioners Monday. “A really high percentage of those (incidents) there’s a gun involved. To me, when I talk about a public health crisis, I would include that.”
Already this year in Raleigh alone, 191 people have been assaulted with a firearm and 21 people have been shot, police statistics show.
Persistent gun violence in Raleigh has led city leaders and the Raleigh Police Department to begin putting together a holistic Community Violence Intervention (CVI) program.
Now they want the county’s help.
Wake County commissioners expressed support Monday for working with others to make violence intervention a top priority.
The effort will be “cross-community and cross-municipal,” without one government solely in charge, according to Commissioner Matt Calabria, who is overseeing the county’s plans.
“The idea is to treat gun violence as a public health problem,” Calabria said in an interview.
The county is in the “very early stages” of developing strategies, identifying partners and designating funding for the program, which will work with Raleigh’s violence prevention program, Calabria said.
The program will include people often referred to as “violence interrupters” who reach out to mediate conflict and prevent retaliatory shootings.
The holistic nature of the program, like the Cure Violence model being used across the world, will focus on the mental and social factors that cause violence.
Durham’s Bull City United program, which uses this model, received nearly $1 million from the city of Durham last year to expand its community outreach work.
In a presentation to the commissioners, Deputy County Manager Ashley Jacobs said Wake County also wants to include a hospital-based program to take advantage of the “window of opportunity” to prevent retaliation after someone is hospitalized for gun violence.
Jacobs referred to similar CVI programs in Mecklenburg and Guilford counties, as well as in Durham, Charlotte, Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem.
Commissioner lost cousins to gun violence
Adamson said she was personally affected by gun violence when her cousins were fatally shot while being involved in a drug deal.
“If someone perhaps had a troubled past or they are in the drug trade, we get really desensitized to that person having a violent death,” she said. “We need to remember in this work that there’s somebody ... who has hope that they’re going to recover and have a productive life.”
Wake County wants to tap its existing human service capabilities to help fight the problem, said Calabria.
“Troubled youth and other folks who may be involved in gangs ... we can connect those folks to human services-style resources which would be housing, job opportunities or other human services case management,” he said.
Last year, the Raleigh City Council approved spending $2 million in American Rescue Plan money on a violence prevention program led by the city and the Raleigh-Apex NAACP.
Raleigh’s program will provide youth and adults identified to be at risk of violence with cognitive behavioral therapy and support victims with trauma therapy, The N&O reported previously.
Gerald Givens Jr., formerly the branch director of the Raleigh-Apex NAACP, said a new organization titled Boots on the Ground will be replacing the NAACP’s role in spearheading the program.
“We’re working really hard to work with all our partners in government and civic organizations and the community to keep our community safe,” Givens said.
County commissioners met March 7 with partners and stakeholders including Givens, Raleigh Police Chief Estella Patterson, Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin and representatives from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Wake County Sheriff’s Office, .
“This is more daunting than other efforts because of the sheer number of stakeholders involved,” Calabria said.
There isn’t a firm timeframe or funding amount identified yet, he said, but the county expects it will take several months to flesh out issues like where the program would be housed and how many employees it would need.
“You will see this come back before the board on a regular basis,” Calabria said.
NC launches Office of Violence Prevention
At the state level, Gov. Roy Cooper announced Tuesday he is creating an Office of Violence Prevention within the N.C. Department of Public Safety,
The office will work with other state agencies and local leaders to reduce violence and firearm misuse, he said.
“All of us deserve to feel safe in our homes, our schools and our communities,” Cooper said. “This new office will help coordinate the efforts to reduce violent crime, tackle both intentional and careless gun injuries and deaths, and work to keep people safe.”
